“Did you want to take a look around? We can do meet-and-greets, and you can pick someone up today if you want. I don’t need to do a home visit, obviously, and I know the kind of man you are.”
“Actually, I think I want to take her.” He looks down at Silver, my presence completely irrelevant as she moons over him. She alternates between being in his lap and attacking his face with kisses.
“She needs to stay here until the puppies are at least eight weeks old, so she has about five weeks left. Is that okay?” I ask as I lay the puppies back down and start to get up. The pile of paperwork on my desk is not getting any smaller the longer I sit here.
“Yeah, that’s fine, as long as you wouldn’t mind watching her when I have to leave for away games. I know this isn’t an ideal time to get a dog, but I don’t know… Feels right.”
“Of course I will. She’ll have sleepovers with Auntie Avery and Auntie Morgan, won’t she?” I coo at her, giving her one last bit of love before locking the kennel and straightening up beside Grayson.
“Great. Then yeah, take me to the paperwork,” he replies happily. “Now, don’t think I didn’t catch that you ignored my question about how you’re doing.”
He shoulder-bumps me as we walk side by side. The nudge trips me up a little, and I laugh.
“Ugh, you’re annoyingly perceptive,” I remark. “I’m okay. Nervous, mostly.”
“You know you don’t have to go. Kane would understand if it was too much for you,” he answers softly. He gripsmy elbow and nudges me to face him, then lets go, and I let my arm hang limply by my side.
The hallway empties as we get closer to my desk. The kennels behind us are mostly silent as the two of us linger in it.
“I can’t just not show up for him, Gray. I know he needs me.”
I wring my hands together, the anxiety creeping up on me. The feelings rise all too fast at the sincerity in Grayson’s gentle tone.
“Of course he needs you, Ave. He’s been desperately in love with you since I’ve known you both. I don’t think I’ve seen two people more right for each other than you two. I know you can get past what happened.” His words are dangerously close to things I haven’t let myself start to think about lately.
“I’m sure we could, but I’m not even sure he wants to,” I rasp, my voice almost a whisper in the quiet. I’m too scared to talk any louder, as if the universe might hear me and try to keep me from what I want most.
“What do you mean?” Grayson asks, sheer confusion lining his features as he crosses his arms over his chest and peers at me.
“It’s just that you didn’t see him in the last few weeks. He wasn’t him, and he wouldn’t talk to me. I was invisible to him. He pulled away, and no matter how hard I tried to pull him back, he somehow got further from me until I felt like the rope tied itself around my neck and I couldn’t breathe.” I sniffle, my vision turning hazy with the unshed tears brimming in my eyes.
“I don’t know why he did that, but I know it isn’t because he doesn’t love you anymore. You know Kane doesn’t talk to anyone, but I think you should force him totalk you. Stop taking no for an answer and demand it,” he challenges as he crosses his arms over his chest.
“I can’t.” Exhaustion clings to me as I wipe my eyes to clear the haze. “What if he doesn’t want me to? What if he decided, just like them, that I’m not worth his time? I can’t bear to lose him. Even if I already have in some way, if he says those words, it’s final, and I have no idea how I would ever recover from that,” I finish with a sob.
Grayson closes the distance and pulls me into a hug. I wrap my arms around him and let myself lose it. The tears come faster than my breath can until I’m sobbing into his shirt.
After a few moments, I finally calm myself down enough to pull away slightly and wince at the wet marks on his shirt.
“Sorry,” I apologize as I wipe the evidence of my crying fit from my face.
“Don’t apologize, Ave. That’s what I’m here for. That’s what we’re all here for. We’re your friends, and you need to let us be there for you,” he remarks, clearing one more tear that escaped my eye.
“I’ll work on it,” I agree with a small smile.
“Good,” he says. “And look. I know I haven’t been friends with you guys as long as the others, but I would never doubt for a second that you’re everything Kane could ever want.”
“What makes you say that?” I muse, folding my arms across my chest and taking a few breaths to clear all the emotion from my voice.
“Because he looks at you as if the world begins and ends with you. From the day I met him, he hasn’t looked at anyone or anything the way he does with you.” He remarks softly, keeping eye contact with me and letting what he sayssink in. “You guys will be okay. I know it. I’m more certain about you than I am about the sun rising tomorrow. You and Kane are inevitable.”
The poetry comes out of him as if he’s telling a tale of two stars on their path to each other.
“Thank you,” I say as a small kernel of hope catches in my chest, a seed planted in the root of my heart, waiting to be watered by actions. “Come on, let’s go finish up that paperwork and get you a dog.” I smile and hold out my arm for him.
He ropes his arm through mine, and we walk off to my desk together, lighter about everything for the first time in weeks.
Everything that could gowrong has up to this point today. We’ve had an abnormally high number of intakes for this time of year, and our shelter cages are starting to overflow. On top of that, the number of volunteers getting everything done has diminished. So, I’ve been here late every night this week, which usually would be what exhausts me. Instead, a certain golden, brown-eyed man has been a near-constant ghost haunting my every thought.
